Saturday, August 31, 2013

Railway properties

Reversionary land in Banff, Alberta.

From: A 1990's Marathon Realty corporate report, found at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa.

Marathon Realty, the real estate arm of the Canadian Pacific Railway, sold railway hotels, buildings, train stations, land, air rights and roundhouses that should have reverted to the Crown.Marathon properties in Vancouver, British Columbia included False Creek (the Expo '86 land), Coal Harbour and Yaletown.Railway Hotels that were sold to the multinational corporation Fairmont Hotel's and Resorts.
Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia - The Quebec pension fund Caisse du depot et placment du Quebec is selling the Fairmont Empress.

The Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia. (Photo from Wikipedia.)

Palliser Hotel in Calgary, Alberta.
Royal York Hotel in Toronto, Ontario.
Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City - The hotel was a filming location for the Alfred Hitchcock movie "I Confess" starring Montgomery Clift and Anne Baxter. .
Chateau Montebello in Montebello, Quebec
Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta.
Chateau Lake Louise in Lake Louise, Alberta.
Kenauk resort near Montebello. Quebec - Fairmont is divesting the 65,000 acre resort.
During the late 1980's, Marathon Realty sold the Chateau Champlain Hotel in Montreal, Quebec.
A true Canadian, someone who loves this country, would never have denationalized the railway hotels. The CPR and CNR hotels were Canada's Eiffel Towers, Palaces of Versailles, Parthenon Temples and Taj Mahals.
The late Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci wrote about the foreign invasion of Italy created by privatization, in her book "The Rage and the Pride." Ms. Fallaci was particularity incensed by the fact that many cultural institutions in her beloved Florence, Italy are foreign-owned. When Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister of Italy, he compiled an 800-page list of state-owned museums, landmarks, prisons, beaches and islands that he planned to place at disposal,see the Economist article "The Colosseum is not (yet) for sale."

Train Stations
1.) The Summerhill-North Toronto CPR station in Toronto, Ontario - Now owned by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. If the LCBO is privatized, the building will be transferred to the Ontario Realty Corporation - a Crown corporation that privatized provincially owned buildings and land, including :
Guelph Reformatory; the Bowmanville Prisoner of War Camp/Training School for Boys; the 348-acre Rideau Regional Centre in Smiths Falls; the London Psychiatric Hospital and Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital.
Ontario Realty Corporation still owns the Don Jail in Toronto and Kingston Psychiatric Hospital including Rockwood Insane Asylum.
Marathon Realty planned to build 700 houses on the grounds of Summerhill Station, see the 1971 book "Marlborough Marathon: One Street Against a Developer" by Canadian historian J.L. Granatstein.

Summerhill Station in Toronto, Ontario. (Wikipedia).

2.) Union Station on Front Street in Toronto, Ontario - The Beaux-Arts train station is currently being "selectively demolished." Sold via an Order-in-Council to the City of Toronto (building); Metrolink (train shed and tracks) and Toronto Terminals Railway (operator). A tunnel linked Union Station to the Royal York Hotel across the street.
3.) The Victoria Avenue station and yard in my hometown, Smiths Falls, Ontario.
4.) Windsor Station in Montreal, Quebec - former headquarters of the CPR.
5.) Winnipeg, Manitoba station - the Manitoba government realizes how important this building is, the former train station is a provincial heritage building.

Former Winnipeg, Manitoba CPR station. (Photo from www.gov.mb.ca)

Buildings
1.) CPR Steamship Terminal in Victoria, B.C. - Now owned by a provincial Crown corporation, the Provincial Capital Commission. The B.C. government is planning to sell Crown assets worth $700 million dollars, allegedly to erase the deficit.

2.) Crystal Garden in Victoria, B.C. - A provincial Crown asset.Roundhouses
1.) The CPR John Street Roundhouse in Toronto, Ontario - The heritage property may be demolished so that Hydro One can build subterranean transformers.

My mother, niece and a friend are walking towards the CPR High Level Bridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. I took the photo in May of 1990.

Spiral Tunnels
1.) The tunnel located at Kicking Horse Pass in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. The National Parks in British Columbia should be devolved to the B.C. provincial government, according to the 1990's document Introduction When a Country.
Federally-owned parks in the province, whose motto is "Splendour without diminishment", are---Yoho National Park; Mount Revelstoke National Park; Glacier National Park; Kootenay National Park; Gwaii Haanas National Park and Pacific Rim National Park.

Land - Drilling, mining, timber and water rights
The American conglomerate General Electric and Oxford Realty paid almost a billion dollars in 1996 for the Marathon Realty property portfolio.GE Energy is a major oil and gas drilling subsidiary of General Electric.
Canadian Pacific was a major shareholder in timber company MacMillan Bloedel and mining company Cominco.Land beneath the Husky Tower/Calgary Tower in Calgary, Alberta
The tower was built on the grounds of a demolished CPR train station. A tunnel connected the train station to the CPR Palliser Hotel.Land beneath an office tower called Metro Hall in Toronto
The Municipality of Toronto paid Marathon $60 million dollars for the land. Toronto Mayor Rob Ford recently suggested that Metro Hall (City Hall) should be sold.(From: "Rob Ford pushes selling Metro Hall" by Paul Moloney, Toronto Star, June 11 2013.)Land beneath Dufferin Mall in Toronto and Place d'Orleans in Ottawa.Land beneath BC Place in Vancouver B.C. - Despite a $500 million dollar renovation bill, the stadium may be privatized.Rights-of-Way
The False Creek Right-of-Way in Vancouver, British Columbia was decommissioned by the CPR in 1989. A few years later, a developer purchased part of the land. (From: "A Railway,a City, and the Public Regulation of Private Property.").

A 1985 court decision stated that any lands not needed by the railway reverted to the people of Canada:Held: Order Accordingly2.) As the lands were no longer necessary for the use of the railway and thus were not used for the purposes of the railway, the lands must be restored to the Crown.(Attorney General of Canada v Canadian Pacific Limited and Marathon Realty Company Limited - February 1985.)

German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber told The Star that Canadians will go out of their minds when they find out what he knows. "Schreiber seeks public inquiry- Canadians 'will go out of their minds' when they hear full story, he says in jailhouse interview" by Tracey Tyler, thestar.com, November 10 2007.
Karlheinz Schreiber said:"Though I must not go into it at the moment, when you have some questions later, I am prepared to speak about the Americans involved, everybody; the FBI, the CIA everybody... It benefited the Americans and the Europeans to stop the train industry."

In 1970 Marathon Realty planned to demolish Windsor Station in Montreal and build a 60-storey office tower. ( Decades ago the National Capital Commission wanted to bulldoze a former Canadian National Railway train station, the Conference Centre, where I worked during the early 1980's). The "Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act" has the following loophole:"Only designated heritage railway stations that are still owned by a railway company under federal jurisdiction are subject to the Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act."
Fairmont (at one time headed by Carl Icahn and Prince al Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia) owns Canadian National hotels as well as Canadian Pacific hotels:
Chateau Laurier - Ottawa.
Queen Elizabeth Hotel - Montreal.
Jasper Park Lodge - Alberta.
Macdonald Hotel - Edmonton.
Hotel Vancouver.

FORMER CPR HOLDINGS IN MONTREAL
Windsor Station
Adirondack Subdivision
Cremazie
Angus Shops
Dorval Station Grounds
Hochelaga Yard
Jean Talon Train Station
Chateau Champlain Hotel
Papineau Yard
Place Viger
Drummond and Laugauchetiere Street, Land and Buildings
Land where the IBM/Marathon Tower was built.
Pointe Claire-Pt. Valois Station
St. Denis Yard
Wentworth Gold CourseFORMER CPR HOLDINGS IN TORONTO
Union Station
West Toronto Yard-Keele and West Toronto
Bathurst North of Lakeshore
Cherry Street Yard, fronting Mill Street.
Fez City Yards, Bathurst
Fronting Yonge Street and Shaftesbury Avenue, Land and Buildings
Front and Beachell Streets
Fronting on Front Street and Spadina Avenue
Mile 403-North Toronto, Shaw Street
North Toronto Subdivision, fronting Birch Avenue
Parkdale Yards, fronting King Street.
Marlborough Avenue and Yonge Street (Summerhill Station, now owned by a company that sells booze, the LCBO.)FORMER CPR HOLDINGS IN VANCOUVER
Coal Harbour
Fairmont Hotel Vancouver
False Creek- 12.837 acres. Book value, according to Marathon, was $1 dollar. The taxpayers of B.C paid $60 million for False Creek, later the site for Expo 86.